Newsletter: An NCTD leadership assessment and the worst methane leak in state history

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The North County Transit District has turned over a leadership assessment summary after more than a year of legal back-and-forth between inewsource and the public agency, at a cost to both organizations of more than a quarter-million dollars in combined legal fees.

The study, performed by the UC San Diego Rady School of Management under a $31,000 contract, detailed the strengths and weaknesses of NCTD’s 12 senior managers in more than a dozen categories including finance, risk management, strategy and integrity.

The San Diego Superior Court and state Court of Appeal found that releasing individual results — manager by manager — would breach employee privacy, but the appellate court ruled NCTD had to release one page of the study that is intended to summarize all the results in a color-coded chart.

A giant stream of potent climate-warming gas — methane — is blowing hundreds of feet into the air in Los Angeles County for the seventh week. The release cancels out hundreds of smaller efforts over more than a decade to clamp down on escapes of the gas, a priority because in the short term, methane is a far more powerful climate-warming gas than carbon dioxide.

The mainly methane gas is pouring out of the ground near a damaged well used to inject gas into an old sandstone oil field for storage.

“I think what we are seeing is probably one of the single largest releases of methane in California history,” said Tim O’Connor, who used to inspect major facilities like refineries for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District and works for the Environmental Defense Fund.

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On a screen in a Granada Hills banquet room Tuesday night, about 300 people saw for the first time something they had only been able to smell for the last six weeks: vapors from an out of control natural gas injection well about a mile from their homes in the Los Angeles County community of Porter Ranch.